


When You Come Out of The Water

by oneoneandone



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:20:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28507350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneoneandone/pseuds/oneoneandone
Summary: “I love you” is a kind of prayer.
Relationships: Tobin Heath/Christen Press
Comments: 7
Kudos: 105





	When You Come Out of The Water

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt**   
>  _How long was I out?_
> 
> I’m feeling angsty?

Tobin’s always been a believer.

Even when it hasn’t been easy, hasn’t been simple, she’s always found comfort in her faith. The ritual of Mass. The familiar words of prayer written in the deepest recesses of her mind and body and heart.

It’s what she’s fallen back on in the darkest points of her life, the times when she’s felt herself adrift in the wilderness, with nothing but the depth of her belief to guide her.

It’s what she falls back on now, here at the side of Christen’s bed, lit only by the glow of monitors, the shaft of light from the busy nurse’s station just outside the room. She leans forward, elbows on the bed, her head lowered as she brings her palms together in the comforting, familiar position.

Nurses slip into the room, taking vitals, adjusting medication, but Tobin ignores them all. Cody takes up residence in the other chair, the other side of the bed, hollow-eyes and haunted. Christen’s sisters come and go and come again. But all Tobin knows is the rhythm of her prayer, and the steady rise and fall of Christen’s chest.

— — —

This isn’t the first time she’s prayed for Christen. Not by far. There have been joyful prayers, prayers for patience and understanding. Prayers asking for support and prayers begging for strength. She’s prayed in the joyful light of Christen’s smile, and the fierceness of her determination. She’s prayed with her hands clasped, with her eyes open, with her lips pressed against the heat of Christen’s skin. She’s prayed in hope and thanks and love.

Now she prays for a miracle for her miracle. A miracle of healing for the miracle of love that is her Christen. She prays and she begs and still the monitors keep their terrible beat and still the doctors murmur in discouraging tones and still Christen lays before them all, bone white and deadly still.

For the first time, Tobin wonders if her prayers are heard.

For the first time, Tobin questions if there’s anyone to hear them.

— — —

Maybe it would be easier if there had been a reason. Someone to target with the fear that all too easily turns into anger. Some diagnosis with a cause that could be identified.

But there’s nothing to blame.

An accident of anatomy. A time-bomb set to ticking with her first squalling breath.

There’s no one to blame and nothing to do.

Nothing but wait and hope and pray.

— — —

“I’m going to take a walk,” Cody rubs her back gently, and Tobin nods. She doesn’t have to tell him she’ll stay. She hasn’t left Christen’s side since they’d let her into the room, taking up her vigil at the bedside of the woman who wears her ring.

Who wore her ring.

It’s on a chain around Tobin’s neck at the moment, held safe until she can slip it onto Christen’s finger again. And Tobin has found a new way to pray, turning the warm metal over and over in her hand, wrapping her fist around the band and holding it tight, tight enough that she can feel the imprint left behind when she opens her palm, a perfect circle.

Tight enough that it hurts, the sharp edges of the stones cutting into her palm, drawing blood. A mockery of sacrifice, but if this is what God asks of her, to bleed, to give up of her own body, she will.

She will.

She hasn’t cried in days, hasn’t let herself cry. But now, alone with the woman she loves, Tobin lets the tears fall. Tears of fear and tears of worry. Tears of longing for the future they’d been planning, so uncertain, so precarious now. She cries out the stress and the ache and the memory of watching it happen, Christen in the kitchen, turning to smile at her.

Tobin prays, tears running down her cheeks, the image of the woman she loves right before the fall, the sudden and shocking crumpling to the ground as if everything had —

— just —

— stopped.

She remembers the laughter in Christen’s eyes and the love in her smile. She remembers the brightness of sunlight in Christen’s hair.

She remembers and she prays for just one more chance. One more chance at forever with the woman she loves.

And Tobin is too smart to bargain with God. But she offers. Offers up herself, every great thing she’s ever accomplished, every inconsequential thing she’s ever done. All that she will do. She offers it up in a prayer and begs, begs, for it to be enough.

Because she can lose everything, Tobin knows. None of it has ever mattered that much when held up in comparison. She can lose everything.

But she can’t lose Christen.

It has to be enough.

— — —

It begins like a memory, the lazy fingers in her hair, and Tobin smiles to herself, hums her pleasure, reality and consciousness still a ways off. It begins just like a thousand mornings, Christen’s fingers in her hair and Tobin’s slow, slow awakening. And she leans into it, the dream, the memory. Unwilling to let it go, unwilling to wake just yet to this new world where Christen’s fingers ever tangling in her hair again is anything but certain.

Reality begins to creep into her awareness, unwanted and unasked for. But the gentle phantom feeling remains.

It remains.

And Tobin is afraid to open her eyes. Afraid to let in the possibility that this is just another way to be haunted, memories of touch.

 _Please, Lord_ , she prays her silent morning prayer, _please_.

And she opens her eyes.

She opens her eyes to green, green irises. To the soft, gentle sight of Christen looking down at where she lays, head on her folded arms, as close as she’s allowed to get to the woman she loves.

“Baby,” Tobin whispers, feeling the vise around her lungs finally ease. Feeling like she can finally breathe. And there are questions there in Christen’s eyes, and there are evaluations to make. What this means and what this will mean and just how much this new existence will differ from their old. But there will be time for all that.

They are going to have the time for all that.

They are going to have time.

Tobin takes the cool hand in her own, pressing kisses to the tear-stained skin. Her tears. Her grateful, relieved, happy tears.

“I love you,” she whispers.

And this, too, is a prayer.

**Author's Note:**

> “Holy,” Justin Bieber


End file.
